Alsace-Lorraine

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Located on France's border with Germany, Alsace-Lorraine encompasses two predominantly Germanspeakingregions (in German, Elsass and Lothringen),which have frequently been disputed between Franceand Germany. The provinces fell to France in the late17th century and early 18th, but as a result ofFrance's humiliating defeat in the Franco-PrussianWar of 1871, all of Alsace and the northern portionof Lorraine (mainly Moselle) were annexed to thenew German empire, the Second Reich, whichemerged as a result of the war. Under German rule,the province was called Reichsland, the inhabitantswere given the choice of remaining in the provinceor leaving for France (45,000 left), and the SecondReich set to work exploiting the rich coal fields ofLorraine, producing coke that fed the fires of Germany'sgreat arms manufacturers. In Lorraine wereforged many of the weapons with which World WarI would be fought.Germany's defeat in World War I resulted inFrance's recovery of Alsace and Lorraine, but thefall of France in 1940 meant that once again theterritory would be annexed by Germany—thistime to the Third Reich. The provinces were designatedtwo Gaue (administrative districts) of theReich, each governed by a Gaueleiter, or manager,who answered directly to Berlin. In contrast to1871, the French-speaking minority of Alsace-Lorrainewere not asked to choose their nationality.Some 200,000 individuals were summarily evictedfrom the region and sent into occupied Francewith only such property as they could carry.Different treatment was given to certain othergroups within the two Gaue. Jews and othersdeemed by the Reich undesirable were deported toConcentration and Extermination Camps,imprisoned, or summarily executed. French soldierswho had been born in the region and who had beenmade prisoners of war during the Battle ofFrance were, for the most part, conscripted into theWehrmacht. A significant number of pro-Germansoldiers thus conscripted were subsequently transferredfrom the Wehrmacht into the Waffen SS.Most of the rest of the region's inhabitants, thoughthey spoke German, identified more readily withAlsace-Lorraine 51France and certainly did not embrace Nazism.These individuals were subject to typical iron-fistedNazi rule, and the resistance was never as active inthe former Alsace-Lorraine as in central and southernFrance. This gave the German overlords a substantiallyfree hand in exploiting the rich cokingcoal reserves of the region, which, as was the casebefore World War I, once again fed the furnaces ofthe German arms industry. After the German surrenderin 1945, Alsace-Lorraine reverted to Frenchcontrol, and the region's inhabitants all became,quite automatically, French citizens once again.Further reading: Engler, Richard E. The Final Crisis:Combat in Northern Alsace, January 1945. Bedford,Penn.: Aegis Consulting Group, 1999; Goodfellow,Samuel Huston. Between the Swastika and the Cross ofLorraine: Fascisms in Interwar Alsace. DeKalb: NorthernIllinois University Press, 1999; Shaw, Michael. History,People, and Places in Eastern France, Alsace, Lorraine, andthe Vosges. Bourne End, U.K: Spurbooks, 1979; Zaloga,Stephen J. Lorraine 1944: Patton vs. Manteuffel. London:Osprey, 2000.